Fungible Life: Experiment in the Asian City of Life

In Fungible Life Aihwa Ong explores the dynamic world of cutting-edge bioscience research, offering critical insights into the complex ways Asian bioscientific worlds and cosmopolitan sciences are entangled in a tropical environment brimming with the threat of emergent diseases. At biomedical center...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ong, Aihwa (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Durham Duke University Press [2016]
Subjects:
Online Access:DE-1043
DE-1046
DE-859
DE-860
DE-473
DE-703
DE-739
DE-858
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Summary:In Fungible Life Aihwa Ong explores the dynamic world of cutting-edge bioscience research, offering critical insights into the complex ways Asian bioscientific worlds and cosmopolitan sciences are entangled in a tropical environment brimming with the threat of emergent diseases. At biomedical centers in Singapore and China scientists map genetic variants, disease risks, and biomarkers, mobilizing ethnicized "Asian" bodies and health data for genomic research. Their differentiation between Chinese, Indian, and Malay DNA makes fungible Singapore's ethnic-stratified databases that come to "represent" majority populations in Asia. By deploying genomic science as a public good, researchers reconfigure the relationships between objects, peoples, and spaces, thus rendering "Asia" itself as a shifting entity. In Ong's analysis, Asia emerges as a richly layered mode of entanglements, where the population's genetic pasts, anxieties and hopes, shared genetic weaknesses, and embattled genetic futures intersect. Furthermore, her illustration of the contrasting methods and goals of the Biopolis biomedical center in Singapore and BGI Genomics in China raises questions about the future direction of cosmopolitan science in Asia and beyond
Item Description:Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 25. Nov 2020)
Physical Description:1 online resource (312 pages) 10 illustrations
ISBN:9780822373643
DOI:10.1515/9780822373643

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